WebWorld - Tom Peters

Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES
R
Series
The
in a
Brawl
No Rules
Women
Roar
The New Economy’s Hidden Imperative
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Work
Matters
Weird
Creating & Maintaining
the High Standard Deviation Enterprise
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Design
Getting Weird & Staying
We are
with
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Talent
Mindfulness
Wellspring of "Corporate Soul" & No.1 Basis for Competitive Advantage?
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL
BRA
WITH NO RULES
R
Series
The
Heart
Bossof Branding
Free
Who Are We?
What’s Our Story?
Why Are We Here?
How Are We Unique?
Does It Make a Dramatic Difference?
Who Cares?
How to find it. How to keep it.
Tom Peters'
eters' Manifestos
Manif
2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES
R
Series
Implementation
of STM/Stuff That Matters!
Tom Peters' Manifestos 2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Tom Peters'
eters' Manif
Manifestos
estos 2002: The BRAWL
BRA
WITH NO RULES
RULES Series
Ser
Tom Peters'
eters' Manif
Manifestos
estos 2002: The BRAWL
BRA
WITH NO RULES
RULES Series
Ser
In
PSF
Unbound
Search
of Excellence:
The Death Knell for “Ordinary”:
Pursuing
A Three-Generation Report Card
Difference
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
The [TOTAL] Victory of the Professional Service Firm*
*I think
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Tom Peters'
eters' Manif
Manifestos
estos 2002: The BRAWL
BRA
WITH NO RULES
RULES Series
Ser
Tom Peters' Manifestos2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
Web
World
2001
Education
and 3rd Millennium Work:
We've Got It Dangerously
Wrong
The 100% Solution...Now!
Tom Peters
Tom Peters
Copyright material for electronic edition:
WebWorld: The 100% Solution. Copyright © 2001 by Excel/A California Partnership.
This edition published by Tom Peters Company Press. For information, address SelectBooks, Inc., New York,
New York.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
First Edition
ISBN 1-59079-011-1
For more of Tom’s ideas, visit www.tompeters.com.
To bring Tom’s ideas into your organization, visit www.tompeters.com/tpc/index.php.
2
“We are in a brawl with no rules.”
– Paul Allaire, former CEO, Xerox
MANIFESTO. The word suggests a pointed view. (Rodale’s Synonym Finder: Manifesto …
Proclamation. Declaration. Pronunciamento. Broadcast. Airing. Broadside.) And “Pointed View”
is precisely the idea of this series of “booklets” – in what we call The BRAWL WITH NO
RULES Series. Each booklet is an expanded chapter of my cornerstone day-long seminars. But I
have chosen these topics for two particular reasons. First, I think they (1) are important and (2)
present enormous opportunities and (3) are grossly neglected by most organizations. Second, I
have a Radical Point of View about each one; you will find no half-way suggestions here!
3
WebWorld: The 100% Solution ... Now!
The NASDAQ soars. Cisco Systems is the most valuable company on earth. The Web is …
EVERYTHING. The NASDAQ crashes. Cisco Systems lays off over 5,000 people. The Web is
… NOTHING.
Which is it?
That’s easy: EVERYTHING.
(No bull.)
(Believe it.)
1. When? NOW.
Cisco. Yes, suffering some bumps in the road. But nobody understands the Web better … as a
user of Web services as well as a provider thereof … than Cisco Systems. About $20 billion in
revenue. Ninety (!) percent of that revenue comes straight off the Web … with no human
intervention. Talk about “virtual”: “Manufacturer” Cisco “has” 38 plants. Owns just two of
them. Fifty percent of orders are routed directly to the supplier … who in turn ships directly to
the end user. One consequence of doing business with such intensity on the Web: annual savings
in service and tech support … $500 million (at least).
It used to be a salt flat. About ten miles north of my office. Redwood Shores, California. The
book has an odd title … but fundamentally an accurate one. The Difference Between God and
Larry Ellison: God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison. Oracle’s main man lives in those towers
at Redwood Shores, California. Yes, Larry Ellison. A year or so ago he went to Wall Street, told
them he was going to start using his own software … Big Time. Literally transfer … EVERY …
function … internal and external … to the Web. And he boasted that he’d save a billion dollars
in the process. In one year. He did. For instance, Vice President Ralph Seferian reports that a
sophisticated call to the customer service center in 1999 cost about $300. Now it costs $1.50.
That “little” shift alone saved … YES … $550 million.
IBM. A computer maker (at least it used to be) … now half its revenue comes from services.
Still, IBM is clearly “OLD” Economy. That is, until it took to the Web … Big Time. For
instance: In the second quarter of Y2000, IBM performed some 42 MILLION transactions
online, and saved close to a billion dollars as a result thereof. Sales online are running about $20
billion. And in the short space of one year, fully one-third of employee training was shifted
online, on Web, to the desktop … with a resulting savings of about $150 million. Or consider
purchasing: “We’ve put the word out to all of our suppliers,” says IBM’s Chief Purchasing
Officer John Paterson. “By the end of the year [2000] we’ll only do purchasing over the
Internet.” At IBM, that amounts to about $50 billion from 18,000 vendors.
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Even insurance. “Insurance radical” is a damn-near Ultimate Oxymoron. That is, unless you’ve
met Peter Lewis, boss of Cleveland’s Progressive Insurance. Listen to the words. They’re
prophetic. And profound. Lewis: “We don’t sell insurance anymore. We sell speed.”
By God, how I love that!
You have a property damage accident. A Progressive dude is out there quickly. Within 20 or so
minutes of arriving at the scene, using the Internet, wireless communication devices, and every
other iota’s worth of the new technologies … the agent has sized up the claim … evaluated it …
and issued the settlement check … yes, within 20 minutes.
(Zounds!)
Old economy company. New economy boss. (Age 65.) GE. Jack Welch. Just retired. He went
after the Internet … hammer & tong & hook & line & sinker … four or five years ago. Did he
ever! A few statistics: In Y2000, GE did $6 billion in purchasing on the Web. In 2001 that
number will run to $15 billion … or more. Y1999 sales from Web activities, across the entire
firm: $1 billion. Y2000: $7 billion. Y2001 estimated: $20 billion plus.
For example: At GE Power Systems, using a website called GEPartsEdge, a major generator
problem that used to take two weeks to analyze is now analyzed in … one hour. In the plastics
business, Polymerland has moved three-quarters of its sales to the Web. In appliances, a call to
the service rep costs about $5. The Web version thereof costs 20 cents. The importance? There
are 20 million such calls per year.
Several months ago there was a big brouhaha in the press. An announcement that GE was going
to lay off 80,000 people. GE denied it vehemently. The rumor was probably wrong. But a large
number of layoffs will come. The announcement, by the way, occurred before the “recessionary”
softening of the market. There was no reported softening in demand at GE for aircraft engines, or
for locomotives, light bulbs, medical devices, power systems. What happened? The Web. GE’s
Bear Hug of the Web has led to such efficiencies that tens of thousands of jobs (maybe or maybe
not 80,000) will disappear as system (after system) … internal and external (à la Oracle) … is
shifted to the Web. “E-business,” Welch wrote in his 2000 Annual Report, “is the final nail in
the coffin for bureaucracy at GE.”
Remember part of the subtitle of this section: NOW! The GE reduction-in-force numbers … true
or false in Y2001 … are a harbinger of what clearly … WILL … HAPPEN … SOON. I’ve
written about it extensively elsewhere. I call it the Big Org-world Tsunami … or the White
Collar Revolution. Sure, there are still “manufacturing companies.” But virtually all the jobs in
“manufacturing” companies are now service jobs: finance … engineering … HR … IS …
purchasing … logistics. You could argue that about 90 percent of “manufacturing” jobs are
service jobs. And that doesn’t include, of course, the 77 percent of us who work in “service
industries” to begin with.
For over a century, we’ve mercilessly attacked blue collar productivity. And: We haven’t laid a
glove on white collar productivity. And now we are doing just that … with the zeal of a religious
convert. It’s the Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) from the SAPs and Oracles and
PeopleSofts. Etc. It’s the Application Service Providers (ASPs). The boundaries and borders
between these ideas fuzz. The point: We’re automating and decimating White Collar Work …
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ALL OF IT … at the speed of light. (Literally.) (And what we don’t automate, we’ll outsource to
the likes of India or … Ghana.) (We are. Already.)
Maybe all this is why such an eminence as Peter Drucker can make such an incredible statement
as he made in late 2000: “The corporation as we know it, which is now 120 years old, is unlikely
to survive the next 25 years. Legally and financially yes, but not structurally and economically.”
The economy is wobbly. A carload of B2C companies … and for that matter, B2B companies …
have headed Deep South … and Out of This World.
Forget it! The WebRevolution is just gathering steam. We’re in the opening seconds of the
opening period of a game that will take 20 or so years … at least … to play out. A game called
… Reinvent the World.
All hell is breaking loose.
2. BIG!
Why is Tom Peters writing about this? The old guy. Age 58. A guy whose last mastered
programming language was Fortran. I don’t pretend to be an expert. And I certainly
acknowledge that, already, a hundred … if not 1,000 … books by smart people have been written
on this topic. I just want to weigh in. AND WEIGH IN NOW. Some – A LOT OF – people are
getting squeamish. Insta-productivity has not flowed from their (sometimes IMMENSE) tech
investments. (Mostly … more later … because they weren’t … REALLY SERIOUS … GEstyle.) But we’re not going to talk technology in this paper. What I am going to talk about is the
Enormity of the Web-Inspired-REVOLUTION … which is inevitable. INEVITABLE. The
message of this paper is very simple: (1) Do this. Go all the way. Now. OR GET CREAMED.
(2) Cut back now … when the spineless & unimaginative wimps are pulling in their horns …
and you are an IDIOT.
It hasn’t been a comfortable journey for me. I like to think that you can embrace progress by
taking a step at a time. But you … SIMPLY CAN’T … when it comes to the … WEB. Do it. All
of it. Now. Or … again … GET CREAMED. That’s what I’ve come to believe. And it’s that
simple … BUT PROFOUND … belief that I want to convey here. With as much passion as I can
muster. That’s the whole damn point of this Very Brief Essay.
This is the Big Enchilada. Everything is changing. The speed of change is accelerating. “Most
of our predictions,” says premier venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins, “are based
on very linear thinking. That’s why they will likely be wrong.” And then there’s Ray Kurzweil.
A futurist. Normally, futurist = flaky. Not in this case. The guy’s got a ton of start-ups under his
belt. And owns a host of patents, dating back decades, in voice recognition software. That is …
he’s got Both Feet planted firmly on the ground! Lately he’s been talking about “The
Singularity.”
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Take a step back. With Kurzweil. Before 1000 A.D., a “paradigm shift” (remember: Stone Age,
Bronze Age, etc.) took … literally … Thousands of Years. By Y1000, such enormous paradigm
shifts were taking about 100 years. During the 1800s, there was more change than there had been
during the prior 900 years. In the 1900s, there was more change in the first 20 years of the
century than there had been during the entire 1800s. By Y2000, a paradigm shift … the arrival of
the Internet … was taking about a decade.
And the 21st century? HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT. Using his scientific knowledge, his
pragmatic background, and sophisticated modeling, Kurzweil confidently predicts that there will
be … ONE THOUSAND TIMES … more technology change in this century than in the century
before. And thence that “Singularity”: “a merger between humans and computers that is so rapid
and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” Kurzweil (CONFIDENTLY!)
predicts that the pace of change will become … INFINITE … within the next thirty or forty
years.
Zounds! Yikes! Egads! (Etc.)
“We are entering an era of no limits,” writes Jeffrey Young in Cisco Unauthorized, “with
nothing to brake the cascade of human intelligence unleashed by the Information Age. The Web
essentially allows all the brains on earth to communicate and share insights in real time, around
the globe, all the time.” “The network,” writes U.C. Berkeley professor Manuel Castells,
“becomes the social structure of everything.” Pretty big word for an academic.
EVERYTHING.
The insane is becoming commonplace. For instance, an AP report in February 2000:
“Researchers say they have found a way to mate human cells with circuitry in a ‘bionic chip.’ …
The tiny device – smaller and thinner than a strand of hair – combines a healthy human cell with
an electronic circuitry chip.” The gurus call this “next BIG step” the Age of Bio-informatics.
It ain’t coming. IT’S HERE.
I sometimes call “all this” … Insane Statements by Very Sane People. Greg Blonder. Now a
venture capitalist. Was Chief Technical Advisor for Corporate Strategy at AT&T. (You don’t get
much more sane than that!) Blonder: “In 25 years, you’ll probably be able to get the sum total of
all human knowledge on a personal device.”
I said a few paragraphs ago and a few paragraphs before … Zounds. This time I say: HOLY
SHIT!
THIS IS … BIG.
7
3. DUMB IS DUMB.
“Oh, get off it,” you almost scream in frustration. “You’ve signed up with the hype-meisters.
AND YOU’RE TOO LATE. THE NASDAQ HAS CRASHED.”
“BULLSHIT!” I scream back. (SCREAM.)
How sweet it is [was]. The dot-com bubble. What did it really mean? A lot of available money.
A lot of Seriously Weird Experiments being funded. And … THE FASTEST LEARNING
RATE WE’VE SEEN IN HUNDREDS OF YEARS. Sure, a lot of it was stupid … TRULY
STUPID. (“Revenue doesn’t matter.”) But it was all … yes, ALL … COOL. Interesting.
FANTASTIC. An Insane Number of “Tries.” Most failed. SO WHAT? Wow … what a Pace of
Learning.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the Truly Stupid Crap got weeded out. FAST. “The Internet is not going away,” someone
wrote at Fool.com, “but flawed business models are.” Michael Dell (the Dell Man) put it this
way: “Let’s be clear on one thing: If you take a business that is a bad business and put it online,
it’s still a bad business. It’s just become an online bad business.”
Yes. No doubt. A lot of the ideas were Truly Stupid. And a lot of Very Smart People …
including those with MBAs and Very High I.Q.s in Venture Capital companies … fell for it. (So
much for the term “rational analyst.”)
But again … I say … HOW COOL.
So we learned: Dumb is DUMB!
At least, even the Big Guys are Paying-the-Piper for Dumb at this Amazing Time of Phenomenal
Change. CEOs appointed after 1985 are three TIMES more likely to be fired than CEOs
appointed before 1985, reports leadership guru Warren Bennis in the MIT Sloan Management
Review.
It’s a Wildly Changing and Gyrating World. And a funny flavor of new word has emerged:
ACCOUNTABILITY.
If you don’t “try it” … YOU’RE DEAD. If you do “try it” … AND SCREW IT UP … you’re
dead too. Ah, what a sweet word: ACCOUNTABILITY.
Go figure.
8
4. BLOW IT UP!
What’s this “Web Thing” all about? Well, let me tell you what it’s not all about: “out of the box
thinking.” OH HOW I HATE THAT TERM. “Out of the box thinking,” as I see it, means
“stretching yourself” “a bit.” Well, what Welch was doing at GE ain’t about … “a bit.” What
Ellison is doing at Oracle is not about “a bit.” It’s about … THE WHOLE BLOODY DAMN
THING.
It’s about … FORGETTING THE ONE WHO BRUNG YOU.
Dee Hock. Some call him the first person to have created a one trillion dollar enterprise. He’s the
founder of the Visa International financial services network. Retired now, he’s taken up
management guru-ing. And he said this: “The problem is never how to get new, innovative
thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.”
Amen!
When Jack Welch, age 62, took to the Internet like a baby, he labeled the new GE Way …
DYB.com. DestroyYourBusiness.com.
That is … BlowTheWholeBloodyDamnThingUp … before the competition does. And if it
makes sense for Monster GE … then it damn well makes sense for you and me. For our Careers.
For our Departments. For our Divisions. For our Companies. (Right?) (Please?!)
Remember our newfound buddy-radical from the insurance world, Peter Lewis of Progressive.
“We don’t sell insurance. We sell speed.” Venture capitalist Geoff Yang puts it this way: “It
used to be that the big ate the small. Now the fast eat the slow.” Go Peter! Go Geoff!
And the corporation as “an Entity formed for Perpetuity” is … DEAD. Wired ran a marvelous
special issue called “Gigatrends.” One of the ten was labeled … “The Age of the Disposable
CORPORATION.” To wit: “As the pace of innovation increases, the useful life span of a given
new product or service often decreases – and so does that of the company that makes it. Start-ups
are still good business, but fewer and fewer will be built to last.” (For example, 15 of 23 Cisco
acquisitions in 2000 were less than three years old. They were born. They did some cool stuff.
And Cisco decided to incorporate that “cool stuff” into its portfolio.)
Or: Built to Last. It was the title of a best-selling business book by my old friends Jim Collins
and Jerry Porras. But the whole idea was questioned by Fast Company magazine, in what I think
was their best issue. The cover of the issue: “Built to Last Versus Built to Flip.” The basic idea:
“The problem with Built to Last is that it’s a romantic notion. Large companies are incapable of
ongoing innovation, of ongoing flexibility. Increasingly, successful businesses will be
ephemeral. … They will be built to yield something of value, and once that value has been
exhausted, they will vanish.”
In a time of Total Madness … They Who Have No History … have an advantage. An enormous
one. Jeffrey Young, in Cisco Unauthorized, asked Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers the
9
following: “Who do you fear the most, big companies or start-ups?” Chambers replied, without
hesitation: “I have a list with a dozen little companies I’m tracking closely. Guys that can start
with a fresh sheet of paper have an enormous advantage technologically. We have to carefully
integrate new capabilities into our existing product line, they don’t.” My friend and Yahoo exec
Tim Sanders reports a similar exchange from Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe. Crowe was asked
whether he was terrified of the big mergers in telecommunications. No, he asserted. What he was
afraid of, he said, was two girls in a sophomore dorm somewhere, who were busily at work on a
Level 4.
Amen. (You go, girls!)
For what it’s worth (from me), the whole Built to Last Idea is … well … Bullshit. My old
McKinsey & Co. mate, Dick Foster, implies as much in his marvelous new book, co-written with
Sarah Kaplan: Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the
Market. The Forbes 100 listing was launched in 1917. In 1987, Forbes did an assessment of the
first 70 years of the list. Sixty-one of the original 100 had died. (Thirty-nine were alive.)
Eighteen of the original list from 1917 were still in the Forbes 100. More interesting: As a group,
the 18 Forbes 100 “survivors” had … underperformed … the market by 20 percent during the
70-year period. And: Only two (two percent) … GE and Kodak … had outperformed the market
during the period 1917 to 1987. (GE still hangs in. Kodak … well, you know that tawdry tale.)
It worked out the same way with the S&P500. The list was started in 1957. An analysis done 40
years later, in 1997, concluded that 426 of the original list of 500 had died. (Seventy-four were
still alive.) Twelve (2.4%) of that original list of 500 had outperformed the market from 1957 to
1997.
Holy smoke! (Translation: The Giants-in-Our-Midst are Emperors-without-Clothes.)
It’s a time of … Insane Change. (You’d have to be an idiot not to recognize that, right?) And yet
all too many of us have had Extraordinary Difficulties trying to deal with the Shape of Radical
Change in … Traditional Companies. An Enron exec told Fortune, “We haven’t been able to
start new businesses within existing businesses.” The Guru of Disruptive Change, Harvard
Professor Clayton Christensen, says that big companies can only deal with Big Change “if they
set up completely independent organizations and let those organizations attack the parent.”
Philip Evans and Thomas Wurster, in Blown to Bits, add: “Even if the executives of established
businesses fully grasp the impact of new technologies, they still face a massive competitive
disadvantage … precisely because they are incumbents. … They do complex financial
calculations and get bogged down in internal political debates. Insurgents have no such
inhibitions.”
Wow!/Hmmmm! And Right on!
I’ve arrived at a rather nutty view of “all this.” And you’ll find it more fully expressed in a
separate booklet in this series, called Getting WEIRD & Staying WEIRD: Creating &
Maintaining the High Standard Deviation Enterprise. (“Standard deviation” is the “average”
difference from the norm among a set of observations – a measure of Weirdness.) I have – after
much thought – concluded that innovation is … EASY.
10
In sum: HANG OUT WITH FREAKS … AND THOU SHALT BECOME MORE
FREAKY. (And … vice versa.) It’s that simple. And that hard. Cisco Systems does a lot of
acquisitions. It doesn’t buy “market share.” It buys “freaks.” (Seriously Cool People in Seriously
Cool Businesses … with Seriously Cool Ideas that are usually within a year or so of roll-out.)
Wayne Burkan anticipated me with a gem of a book, titled Wide Angle Vision. He says we have
several flavors of Saviors-in-Waiting: Disgruntled Customers … Fringe Competitors … Rogue
Employees … Edge Suppliers. That is … FREAKS. That is … Hang with those FREAKS …
absorb their FREAKY MESSAGE … and you will become a little bit more FREAKY.
E.g.: Hang with customers who are … FREAKS … and you will be Pushed to the Limits. It’s a
no-brainer. Anybody who has set foot on a golf course or tennis court knows it. Play against
crappy-dull competitors … and your game goes DOWNHILL … FAST. Same thing is true with
… Employees … Suppliers … Board Members.
FREAKS. I’ve come to love the word … FREAKS. Because I’m a … FANATIC … FAN … OF
… ENFORCED RENEWAL. And renewal clearly comes courtesy … FREAKS. Consider these
potent words from senior Wall Street Journal reporter-editorialist G. Pascal Zachary, author of
The Global Me: “Diversity,” Zachary writes, “defines the health and wealth of nations in a new
century. Mighty is the mongrel. The hybrid is hip. The impure, the mélange, the adulterated, the
blemished, the rough, the black-and-blue, the mix-and-match – these people are inheriting the
earth. Mixing is the new norm. Mixing trumps isolation. It spawns creativity, nourishes the
human spirit, spurs economic growth and empowers nations.” A variation on this theme is the
unique (to this epoch) role of … YOUTH. The Economist put it thus: “Why focus on these late
teens and twenty-somethings? Because they are the first young who are both in a position to
change the world, and are actually doing so. For the first time in history, children are more
comfortable, knowledgeable and literate than their parents about an innovation central to society.
The Internet has triggered the first industrial revolution in history to be led by the young.”
Remember, though I’m going on for pages … my point is SIMPLE. The INTERNET … is
changing … EVERYTHING. As I see it … which is the central thesis of this Essay: YOU’RE
EITHER ON THE BUS … OR YOU’RE OFF THE BUS.
5. BIG REDUX!
I say again: THIS (THE WEB) IS BIG. IT IS ENCOMPASSING. IT WILL CHANGE
EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE REDESIGNED. NOW.
That’s the idea behind this little booklet-rant. Not to give the details. (I’m not capable.) But to
Incite You to Start a Revolution, assuming that your company is not one of those that’s done so
already.
NEEDED. DESPERATELY. REVOLUTIONARIES.
11
Big. BIG. BIG! It’s just one B2B. Name: Covisint. A coming together, announced in February
2000, of the supply-chain activities of the Big Three automakers. Now joined by Renault and
Nissan … and the Web-based architects … Oracle and Commerce One.
Big.
Initially, Covisint aims to encompass about $240 billion of auto parts trade. Add in the suppliers’
suppliers … and their suppliers … and you can perhaps add another one-half trillion dollars to
that. As I said … ONE B2B … and perhaps three-quarters of a trillion dollars. The goals are
humongous: extract two to three thousand dollars in costs from the average $20,000 automobile.
And on top of that, abet a reduction in new-car development-cycle time from 42 months to 12 to
18 months.
The initial going is slow. Problems are enormous. Maybe Covisint won’t pull it off. My take: So
what? If Covisint doesn’t do it … SOMEBODY ELSE(S) WILL.
I voraciously dug into David Stauffer’s new book: D2D: Dinosaur to Dynamo. He examines
strategies followed by 20 established companies … MOSTLY BIG & UNSUNG … to Change
the World … via the Internet. The companies include some mentioned here. For example, GE.
And other Web-masters such as Charles Schwab. And: Rosenbluth International, the travelservices giant. And: Snap-on Incorporated … the Cool Tool Guys. And … yes … Cemex, S.A.
Cemex … a contraction of Cementos Mexicanos … is using the Web to revolutionize the
[typically cretin] cement and construction materials markets. In Mexico … throughout Latin
America … and around the world. Cemex came up with a most unlikely idea: Just In Time
Cement. (!) And pulled it off. Leading to enormous-awesome differences in productivity … and
profitability. I love that. I love it so much I could giggle.
In fact, the “coolest” part of this Adolescent (or is it Nursery School?) Web-Internet saga is the
Old Dudes who are … belatedly, to be sure … “Getting It.”
This is … BIG.
6. THE CUSTOMER RULES.
The Web’s “dirty little secret” … neither Dirty nor Little … is that the customer runs this new
show! Consider our friends at Cisco Systems, the folks with 90% of their $20 billion in revenues
coming straight off the Web … with no human intermediation. Those who do business with
Cisco exclusively through the Web … for one thing … report customer satisfaction scores that
are above those of Cisco’s customers who do business via people. (Yikes! Hey, I’m the guy – or
one of two, along with Bob Waterman – who insisted in In Search of Excellence that “intimate,
humanized customer service” was the be-all and end-all of sustainable competitive advantage.)
The Cisco, Dell, and Amazon secrets are roughly the same: ENGAGE THE CUSTOMER! PUT
THE CUSTOMER IN CHARGE!
12
For example, Cisco powered up some innocent “chat rooms” for customer engineers. The
process has now evolved into full-scale, “virtual,” “collaborative design” activities. Among other
(not so small) things, Cisco estimates it harvests over $1 billion in “free” consulting from
customer engineers. As of the last quarter of Y2000, some 45,000 customer problems … PER
WEEK … were being solved on the Web via customer collaboration. No Cisco intervention …
other than construction and maintenance of the Website.
(As I write, I’ve just finished a meeting with some execs ramping up a major strategic
initiative. I am not a techie! But I marveled that I found myself – not for the first time – the
Loudest Advocate for Making the Web THE Engine for Collaboration among those
quarterbacking this massive program-expansion process. It’s so bloody evident that the ability
to informally-but-intensively-and-in-real-time share experiences is the Heart of a Newfound
Opportunity to Accelerate a Big Ramp-up Effort. ISN’T THIS OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE? I
was pissed, actually. I felt that I was being condescended to – smile & nod, smile & nod – as I
went into Yet Another “Web-Is-It” Rant.)
My shorthand for all this: WELCOME TO D.I.Y. NATION! Former Oracle president Ray Lane
pegs it: “Changes in business processes will emphasize self-service. Your costs as a business go
down and … perceived service … goes up because customers are conducting it themselves.”
Amen.
Perceived service! “Perception is reality” – Tom Peters, co-author, A Passion for Excellence,
1985. Psychologists, who agree on very little, do agree on one thing: The strongest force on
earth? ONE’S NEED TO BE IN PERCEIVED CONTROL OF ONE’S UNIVERSE!
That’s a lot about what “all this” is about. American Express executive Anne Busquet says that,
in fact, this is not the Age of the Internet. It is: the Age of Customer Control.
Amen! (Again.)
And the Tsunami is rolling in … fast. I get such incredible service from Amazon. And then I
practice “transference” … and wonder why I can’t get it from my car dealer … or mortgage
banker. Regis McKenna, Silicon Valley’s Marketing Guru No.1, calls it exactly right when he
says we are now in “the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer.” “The moral is,” say Mercer
Consulting execs Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison, “that in an imperfect world of
customer service, most customers prefer to cut to the chase and help themselves.”
“Most customers.” Not just for books. But for … SOPHISTICATED INDUSTRIAL
“SYSTEMS” PRODUCTS. From Cisco. Oracle. Snap-on. GE. You name it.
Ah, yes, the unleashing of the customer. Andrew Shapiro wrote a marvelous book, The Control
Revolution. He defines the term: “The control revolution. The potentially monumental shift in
control from institutions to individuals made possible by new technology such as the Internet.”
Or consider this similar refrain, from Swedish business strategy gurus Kjell Nordström and Jonas
Ridderstråle, in Funky Business: “[The Web] enables total transparency. People with access to
relevant information are beginning to challenge any type of authority. The stupid, loyal and
humble customer, employee, and citizen is dead.” On it goes. Dot-com crash notwithstanding, no
13
assertion is too extreme. (For me, at least.) Take this one from Internet guru Don Tapscott:
“Imagine a world where a citizen could search the globe to assemble ‘my government,’ the
ultimate in customized, customer-centric services. Health care from the Netherlands, business
incorporation in Malaysia …” (Fact: NOTHING STRIKES ME AS THE SLIGHTEST BIT
ODD ABOUT THAT.)
The authors of the magnificent Cluetrain Manifesto are clear: HYPER-LINKS SUBVERT
HIERARCHY!
I love it!
And “it” may well have its most pronounced impact on the Giant World of health care,
particularly as America’s 76 million baby-boomers age … and continue their insistence that
they are … IN CHARGE. “It may be the most far reaching evolution of them all,” writes Richard
Firstman, in an article titled “Heal Thyself” in On Magazine. “[It’s] the metamorphosis of
passive patient into consumer – and well-informed, assertive consumer at that. The defining
axiom of traditional medicine – ‘doctor’s orders’ – is being turned on its head. These days it is
the patients who are armed, the doctors who must get wired to keep nimble.” Firstman goes on to
coin a lovely term/idea: “E-health is the new house-call.” (Again … sorry I keep saying this …
I LOVE IT. That is, THIS “STUFF” IS VERY COOL.)
And if it’s not one (BIG) thing, it’s another (BIG THING). Peter Drucker – the guru’s guru of
management – insists that the biggest growth industry in America, and perhaps the world, in the
next … THREE DECADES … is going to be the “re-education of adults.” Cisco Systems CEO
John Chambers apparently agrees: “The next killer application for the Internet is going to be
education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email look like a
rounding error.”
The consumer … at Retail or Commercial … is Taking Charge. Taking Charge of his or her
financial well-being. His or her health care. His or her re-training. His or her Snap-on Tools. And
“taking” charge means taking “charge” … AWAY FROM … the powers-that-currently-be. So
the big question is: IS YOUR STRATEGY LITERALLY CENTERED AROUND
CUSTOMER-CLIENT EMPOWERMENT & SELF-DETERMINATION? (Again … hint:
“This means letting go of traditional sources of power.”)
November 2001. Tom Peters. Consumer. Businessperson. I can:
– Shop for $1 million houses or $1.95 office supplies, at best price and with best
advisers … via the Internet.
– Manage all my financial dealings … no matter how sophisticated … via the
Internet.
– Work with my doctor … or the world’s best medical experts … or humble
support groups suffering from the diseases that I suffer from … on any health issue …
via the Internet.
– Recruit talent … from anywhere! … to help me with Any Project … via the
Internet. Right now.
– Develop insanely sophisticated documents, collaboratively, with anyone(s) from
anywhere(s) … 24/7/365.
– Share my ideas with the world!
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– Chat with anyone … anywhere … at any time.
– Research any-damn-thing. In incredible detail. (And it requires virtually no
“technical savvy.”)
– Take a course on … any topic … from cooking to software design … at any time …
and at a reasonable price.
– Stay in direct contact with my 92-year-old mom!
– Play a gajillion games to while away the time. (And frequently, I must admit, I
do just that.)
– Etc.
– Etc.
And the point … REPEATED CEASELESSLY EVEN IN THIS SHORT ESSAY … is that …
WE AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET. As broadband/infinite bandwidth reaches us … HOLY
MOLEY. As the 75 million members of Gen X and Gen Y make it into management … those
who have grown up with PlayStations and Game Boys … and have Infinite Expectations about
Information Availability about EVERYTHING … HOLY MOLEY.
No, we ain’t seen nothing. Yet. Mosaic & Netscape & Loudcloud creator … and all-around
Internet Guru Marc Andreessen puts it this way: “The concept of being always on, always
connected, is a very powerful one. Companies are going to need to reach consumers across all
the different transmission media and devices – across wireless, on cell phones, into cars, onto
airplanes, into cabs, into the home and TV set. It’s not just the message. Now you’ve got a
connection, what do you do with that?”
Ah, yes … WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THAT?
7. KEEP IT CLEAN, DUDE!
A while back, I checked the market capitalization of SOUTHWEST AIRLINES. It was larger
than that of … United … and American … and Delta … and USAIR … COMBINED. There are
lots of reasons. One of them: 35% of Southwest’s bookings and revenue come straight off the
Web … from Southwest’s site per se.
Ah, yes, Southwest’s site! I read a story some time ago that I didn’t believe. It said the SWA site
was so easy to use that many customers, upon finishing their transactions, called Southwest … to
confirm that they had done what they thought they had done on the site. “Silly,” I snorted to
myself. And then it turned out that I was going to visit my Mom in Baltimore, leaving from
Albany. Both are Southwest locations. So I decided to do my booking at the site. I was a firsttime user … and I was … STUNNED. I must have been at the site for less than two minutes (I’m
quite sure of that). It was simple. So simple. So clear. So easy to use. So idiot-proof.
Bless you, Southwest.
And why are you … SOOOOOOOO RARE?
15
There are lots of reasons for the B2C failures, not least of which is the hyper “sexiness,” overcomplication, and general user-unfriendliness of the sites. Nobody is on that case more than
consultant and former Sun Microsystems Usability Guru-Fanatic Jakob Nielsen.
“Most companies,” Nielsen writes in (HIS UTTERLY BRILLIANT) Designing Web Usability,
“would do more business on the Internet if they fired their entire marketing department and
replaced it with people who could produce interactive content that actually made it easier for
users to buy.” Bless you, Jakob!
The GOLDEN RULES … according to Nielsen:
– All Web projects are customer-interface projects!
– Simplicity rules!
– Make it easy for customers to perform useful tasks!
– Less “cool,” more useful!
– Speed rules!
(Read the book! It’s for all of us.)
I’m not a techie, as I mentioned before, but I’ve developed my own set of rules, not far from
Nielsen’s. They’re the ones that I use to harangue my colleagues relative to the [painfully slow]
development of tompeters.com. To wit:
Rule #1: The USER is a VERY weary businessperson, using a laptop with a small, nonadvanced screen, sitting at 11:00 p.m. in a hotel room, hooked up at 28.8. If it doesn’t work and
download rapidly under those circumstances … YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG.
Rule #2: Use plenty of WHITE SPACE. Forget the sexy moving doo-dads. RAPID
DOWNLOAD-ABILITY RULES!
Rule #3: Follow the Yahoo! dictum, and keep the opening screen fast, clear, and
comprehensive. (That’s a lot to ask for one screen … but Yahoo’s done it. So can you.)
Rule #4: Be more than willing to give users lots of outs. That is, hyper-link to
everything! THAT’S THE BLOODY POINT OF THE WEB! (If your site is worth a damn,
they’ll come back.)
Rule #5: IT’S INTERACTIVITY, STUPID! The point of the Web is a two-way, N-way
conversation. Engage the user. Give her or him opportunities to comment on everything, engage
with other users. Again: IT’S INTERACTIVITY, STUPID! IT’S COMMUNITY, STUPID!
(And oh how many – including myself, much of the time – forget this or honor it in the breach.)
Rule #6: Provide all sorts of links to sources of information. For many of us, the Web is
the Great Research Tool. I love Drudge Reports. Matt is okay, but the plain black and white
screen … with links to every-damn-news-source-imaginable … is … UTTERLY …
FABULOUSLY … INSANELY … GREAT. (Thanks, Matt.)
Rule #7: Keep it … FRESH! There’s a lot of “base case” stuff that will remain roughly
unchangeable. On the other hand, even AOL [my ISP … sneer if you want] keeps, at times, the
same material on too long. The Web is all about … TIMELINESS.
Rule #8: If you want me to pay for stuff, make it simple. Follow the Southwest Airlines
dictum. Tell me … PRECISELY … how to enter appropriate and needed information. Limit that
information to what you actually need. And then get me out of there. (And send me a
confirmation … à la Amazon … INSTANTLY.)
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Rule #9: Make it fun. Fun is not necessarily the reason I’m visiting, but a little fun, a
little spice here and there, is … well … Great. In USA Today [I read it religiously … always
have], I love the little charts and graphs in each section. Little nuggets, often quite interesting.
It’s those “little” touches … that are … SOOOOO BIG … over the long haul … in keeping me
interested.
Call it one man’s opinion. (IT IS.) Albeit the opinion of someone who does log onto the Web at
least … A DOZEN TIMES … a day.
8. RADICAL ... OR ELSE!
What follows in this section is the reason I wrote this damned booklet! What I’m writing annoys
me. I believe in “try a little of this, try a little of that, learn a little bit, try a little bit more.”
(Quickly, to be sure.) Or, I used to believe it. I don’t believe it about the Web. I … now …
believe that you’ve either got to … GO FOR IT … or quite probably be consigned to the
sidelines. Jack Welch, the legendary, just-retired GE boss, apparently shares my view. He said
the following in a July 2000 interview with Forbes: “One cannot be tentative about this. Excuses
like ‘channel conflict’ or ‘marketing and sales aren’t ready’ cannot be allowed. Delay and you
risk being cut out of your own market, perhaps not by traditional competitors, but by companies
you never heard of 24 months ago.” More Jack: “WHERE DOES THE INTERNET RANK IN
PRIORITY? IT’S NO. 1, 2, 3, AND 4.”
Jack, I buy your act!
(Would that more did.)
I put together a slide a while back, trying to summarize what I thought. Just a few statements.
But they capture what I have come to believe is … ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. (About this
“Web stuff.”)
Title of the slide: WebWorld = Everything:
– Web as a way to run your business’s innards … 100% thereof.
– Web as connector for your entire supply-demand chain.
– Web as “spider’s web” which reconceives the fundamental definition of the
industry in which you have historically participated.
– Web-B2B as ultimate wake-up call to “commodity producers.” (Those with a
Low Value-added Proposition are DOOMED.)
– Web as the scourge of slack inefficiency, sluggish bureaucracies, poor customer
data.
– Web as an Encompassing Way of Life. (It’s Attitude, stupid!)
– Web = Everything (product development to after-sales service). (E-V-E-R-YT-H-I-N-G.)
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– Web forces you to focus on what you do best … and dump the rest.
– Web as entrée for anybody, at any size, to World’s Best-at-Everything as next door
neighbor and prospective partner!
(Okay?)
While talking about my Slide Shows … let me subject you to a little bit more. I called this one:
Jargon Bath.
To wit:
Bureaucracy free …
Systemically integrated …
Internet intense …
Knowledge based …
Time and location free …
“Instantly” responsive …
Customer-centric …
Mass customization enabled.
What a jargony mouthful! So … I provided a (slightly better) translation:
Bureaucracy free = Flat organization. No Bullshit.
Systemically integrated = Whole supply chain tightly wired/friction free.
Internet intense = Do it all (ALL) via the Web (ALL).
Knowledge based = Open access (NO LIMITS).
Time and location free = Whenever, wherever. Period.
“Instantly” responsive = Speed demons.
Customer-centric = Customer calls the shots!
Mass customization enabled = Every product and service is rapidly (instantly)
tailored to the particular/peculiar client requirements.
DAMN IT! (Okay?)
All of these things are possible … NOW. DAMN IT! It is a … REVOLUTION. Swallow it
… WHOLE … NOW. (That’s my URGENT advice.) If you ain’t doing so, somebody else is.
(NOW.) (GET IT?)
I wholeheartedly acknowledge the problems associated therewith. I recently keynoted an
eCommerce conference. Several thousand techies. I wanted to shake them up. I said that I
thought their projects were important. ALL IMPORTANT. But I said that I was quite certain that
most of them would fail. Why? Here were the two slides I used:
Message1: eCommerce is not a technology play! It is a relationship, partnership,
organizational and communications play, made possible by new technologies.
Message2: There is no such thing as an effective B2B or Internet-supply chain strategy
in a low-trust bottlenecked-communication, 6-layered organization.
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I had a good friend who spent a couple of years working on an SAP/R3 installation. He was
assisted by a superb team of consultants. And yet their progress was slow … PAINFULLY
SLOW. We had m-a-n-y lengthy discussions about it.
The problem was not SAP. And the problem was not his consultants … from
PricewaterhouseCoopers. The problem was … OLD-FASHIONED POLITICS. You see, if you
do ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or any of its more Internet-intense variations … you
screw around … MASSIVELY … with the extant Power Structure. Little bits of paper, waiting
to be initialed for approval, can’t sit on Officious Middle Managers’ desks … or the Mahogany
Desks of the Big Barons who run “country operations” (in the case of my colleague). Remember
the earlier quote: “Hyper-links subvert hierarchy.” Do they ever! Hence, to effectively “take on”
this “Internet thing” … means that one must become a Master Politician. The Politics of
Implementation are what slowed down containerization at the docks … the installation of robots
in the automobile plant. In the former, blue collar cases, the center of resistance was the unions.
Now it’s the Upper Ranks of the Hierarchy … watching their Baronies attacked by a bunch of
Nerds wielding Bits and Bytes at the Speed of Light.
I’ve used Cisco Systems several times as an example. And I’ll use them again here. As
mentioned, a chief attribute of Cisco’s success using the Web to its advantage is the customercollaboration activities it’s created. Well, there’s a key word associated therewith: TRUST!
There is … obviously (in retrospect) … no such thing as Collaborative Design … unless I (your
customer-partner) have access to all, or virtually all, of your Most Important Proprietary Data.
Cisco has allowed such access. And it’s paid off. Big Time. But … such a policy is – absolutely,
positively – ANATHEMA … to a typical Fortune 500 company.
Ray Lane, former Oracle president and now a senior officer at the venture capital firm Kleiner
Perkins, homes in with laser-like precision: “[E-business] is about rebuilding [the
organization] from the ground up. Most companies today are not built to exploit the Internet.
Their business processes, their approvals, their hierarchies, … the number of people they
employ. … All of that is wrong for running an e-business.”
And those who would take … THE LEAP have got to be involved … up to their eyebrows. Lane
continues: “Top management has to spend time on the details. [They aren’t] used to being very
detail-oriented. They have to get back to figuring out, ‘How is it we will take an order on the
Internet?’ ‘How will we communicate with our suppliers, force them to use the Internet?’
‘What do these business processes look like?’ ”
Fabulous.
A New World Order. For: “Joe Doaks.” I thought this was a superb description, appearing in Red
Herring in late Y2000. Life for a NEW “real person” in an Internet-dominated world: “When
Joe Employee at Company X launches his browser, he’s taken to Company X’s personalized
home page. He can interact with the entire scope of Company X’s world – customers, other
employees, distributors, suppliers, manufacturers, consultants. The browser – that is, the
portal – resembles a My Yahoo for Company X and hooks into every network associated with
Company X. The real trick is that Joe Employee, business partners, and customers don’t have
to be in the office. They can log on from their own cell phone, Palm Pilot, pager, or home
office system.”
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That’s the ticket. And what a … BIG TICKET … it is. And … HOW SCREWED YOU ARE …
if you aren’t the first one in the neighborhood to get there!
(No bull.)
9. WANTED: DREAMERS!
The technology is sophisticated. (UNDERSTATEMENT.) The Politics are daunting.
(UNDERSTATEMENT.) But that’s not all.
There’s something (BIG) else.
I think.
I came across a passage in an unlikely source. It got to me. Got to me. And made me think … far
more deeply than I had … about this “Internet Thing.”
The unusual source: Alice in Wonderland.
Here was the quote from Lewis Carroll that got under my skin … and remains there: “There’s no
use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much
practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why,
sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
What’s the point of all this? A DAMNED BIG ONE.
Yes, the “Web Thing” is all about … Technology … and Politics. Etc. But it’s about something
else. SOMETHING BIGGER.
In short: THE INTERNET … THOUGH A “MERE ENABLING DEVICE” … ALLOWS US
TO DREAM DREAMS WE COULD NEVER HAVE DREAMED BEFORE!
In retrospect: That’s the Whole Damn, Bloody Point! Sophisticated technology. Yes. Daunting
politics. Yes. But … MOST IMPORTANT … Dreams. The dreams of Larry Ellison … that led
Oracle to its decision to embrace the Web … with incredible rapidity and encompassing vigor.
The Dreams that led … Charles Schwab to reinvent his company as an Internet-based company.
The Dreams that led … Jack Welch … late in his tenure … to Embrace the Internet … with
phenomenal vigor (and rapidity) … that forced GE’s top 600 managers to find Youthful Mentors
… to teach them about the potential of this Extraordinary and New Transformational Tool.
One of Welch’s lieutenants, Bob Nardelli, now the CEO of Home Depot, ran the $15 billion GE
Power Systems operation. It was the most profitable of GE’s operations – surprisingly.
(Typically “ye olde economy” at first blush.) But Nardelli’s secret was his Embrace of the
20
Internet and … ALL IT STOOD FOR. He wanted to get GE Power Systems in the middle of
things. EVERYTHING(S). Use the Web to become the Power Player in the Middle of Things.
“We want to be the air traffic controllers of electrons,” Nardelli once said. Amen!
Welch’s dreams. (GE.) Nardelli’s dreams. Schwab’s dreams. (Charles Schwab.) Ellison’s
Dreams. (Larry, Oracle.)
Hard work. DAMN RIGHT. But … in the end … NEW DREAMS. My belief … in the end of
ALL THIS … is simple: Survivors will move all of their operations to the Web. NOW. Web =
Encompassing … or else.
DREAM BIG!
Hey: And what a time … DAMN IT … to … DREAM BIG. We’re in a slump, if not a recession.
Many are pulling in their horns. Hence the catastrophic plunges of stock at companies such as
Nortel and Cisco Systems. But there’s a lesson to be learned here. My take: ONLY IDIOTS
PULL IN THEIR [investment] HORNS DURING A DOWNTURN. Now, when the wimps and
wusses are retreating to the sidelines, is … THE HOUR. Go for it. Now. BIG TIME.
10. Wanted: LEADERS!
Wanted: LEADERS!
Wanted: DREAMERS!
Wanted: TOUGH-MINDED SONS OF BITCHES WHO WILL OVERCOME THE
POLITICAL HURDLES … and … GET IT DONE!
These are madcap times. The technology is changing by the day. The White Water will be with
us … approximately … FOREVER.
Those who will Seize This Moment … will not be the … FAINT OF HEART. They will be the
Nervy ones. Those who are willing to fail … FAIL BIG TIME … IN PURSUIT OF THEIR …
INSANELY ENORMOUS … DREAMS.
So? ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?
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Tom Peters’ MANIFESTOS2002: The BRAWL WITH NO RULES Series
WE ARE IN A BRAWL WITH NO RULES. We are RE-INVENTING THE WORLD ...
from scratch! WHAT A THRILL! (And a thrill of the sort no one’s had for centuries.) We
are in a BRAWL WITH NO RULES. We get to make it up as we go along. I am so psyched
to be around for “all this.” Is it confusing? OF COURSE. Is it maddening?
ABSOLUTELY. But how sweet that is!
THE WORK MATTERS! White Collar Work – 90+% of all work – will be totally
reinvented in the next 10 or so years. GET WITH THE PROGRAM ... OR GET
RUNOVER. Strategies: (1) Turn “Departments” into full-fledged, for-profit “PSFs” –
Professional Service Firms. These “PSFs” become, in turn, the primary engines of
company value added through the accumulation of intellectual capital. (2) Turn all “the
work” into no-bull WOW! PROJECTS. Projects you’ll be bragging about 10 years from
now! (3) Encourage every “employee” to pursue a spicy Brand You strategy – creating a
Unique & Valuable Identity that’s worth a fortune to the employee & the company. (This
booklet is the basis for our three book “Reinventing Work” series: The Professional
ServiceFirm50 ... The Project50 ... The Brand You50.)
IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE: A THREE-GENERATION REPORT CARD. In
Search of Excellence marks its 20th anniversary in 2002. I aim to “beat the press” in terms
of commentary. My chosen vehicle: a three-generation look. That is, I look at 1982 (the
book’s pub date) ... and 20 years back (mgt. practice, circa 1962) ... and 20 years forward
(mgt. 2002). It was fun to write – and I hope of some small use.
THE DEATH KNELL FOR “ORDINARY”: PURSUING DIFFERENCE. “We” have
gotten (lots) better at everything. But so has “everybody .else.” “Excellent” products
&services are quickly becoming “ordinary” and thence “commoditized.” This
MANIFESTO summarizes 9 powerful strategies for combatting Creeping & Ultimately
Fatal Commoditization. (Several of these strategies are the subject of separate
MANIFESTOS below.)
WOMEN ROAR: THE NEW ECONOMY’S HIDDEN IMPERATIVE. The evidence is
clear! (1) WOMEN ARE BETTER LEADERS THAN MEN (under the conditions of
the New Economy). (2) WOMEN ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST
MARKETOPPORTUNITY (BY FAR) ... and are wildly underserved. The stakes amount
to TRILLIONS of dollars. (“The” answer, incidentally, is not “target marketing”; it is the
much deeper Target Innovation.) Our story: WOMEN ROAR. WOMEN RULE. Believe it!
(And ... Damn Few “Get It” ... even in 2001. WHADDANOPPORTUNITY!)
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DESIGN MINDFULNESS. “It” works (understatement) for SONY. And APPLE. And
GILLETTE. And BMW. And WALT DISNEY. And BODY SHOP. And
BLOOMBERG.“It” = An Abiding Passion for DESIGN. Design turns out to be the
Principal Reason we LOVE or HATE something ... “product” or “service.” Hence, design
is the Hidden Engine powering the Brand Promise. So ... WHY DO SO FEW PAY
(OBSESSIVE) ATTENTIONTO IT? Again, the potential payoff is humongous.
GETTING WEIRD & STAYING WEIRD: CREATING & MAINTAINING THE
HIGHSTANDARD DEVIATION ENTERPRISE. Standard Deviation is a statistical
measure of Weirdness. Companies that will thrive in Weird Times will systematically adopt
Weird Practices. That is: Hang With Weird Customers & Suppliers. Recruit & Promote
Weird Talent. Appoint Weird Boards. Etc. Etc. Innovation is “easy”: Force
yourself/organization into Constant & Intimate Contact with The Weird Ones! (It is that
EASY!)
THE HEART OF BRANDING. BRANDING IS EASY. (And, of course, impossible.)
Forget clever marketing programs. And compelling logos. And Big Bucks Advertising.
They’re all important, but the icing on the cake. The cake itself is an unswerving & crystalclear answer to some “simple” questions: WHO ARE WE? HOW ARE WE (no bull)
UNIQUE? WHY DOES IT MATTER? WHO CARES? IS IT COMPELLING
ENOUGHTO VAULT 1000s OF EMPLOYEES OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING?
Branding That Matters is difficult (KNOW THYSELF!) and simple (KNOW THYSELF!).
THE CASE FOR “BRAND INSIDE”: IT’S THE “ORGANIZATION,” STUPID! Brand
Inside Rules! Few businesses fail for want of a Great Strategy. Or Soaring Vision. Most
businesses that fail (99 percent ?) do so because of lousy execution. Any idiot can write a
strategic plan. Pulling it off is an entirely different matter. You need Execution. That is, the
PEOPLE. The politics. The systems. The culture. The character.
TALENT! There’s an All-out War for Talent. WINNING? Easy! Like Branding: Easy...
and impossible. WINNING THE ALL-OUT WAR FOR TALENT DEMANDS ...FIRST
AND FOREMOST ... AN ABIDING OBSESSION WITH TALENT! NFL Franchisevariety. Ballet Company-style. (TALENT-IS-ALL!) Provide Awesome OPPORTUNITIES.
PAY Incredibly Well. Pursue DIVERSITY. Seek out THE STRANGE ONES. Honor
YOUTH. Etc. Talent Am Us ... or We Ain’t Serious. PERIOD. (P.S.: Talent= The Brand ...
over the long haul. OBVIOUS. Right?)
BOSS-FREE IMPLEMENTATION OF STM/STUFF THAT MATTERS! Forget the
“power-less-ness” CRAP! (Try that Sob Story somewhere else! Gandhi ... and King ... and
de Gaulle ... were NO SHIT POWERLESS ... and Changed the World!) THE Success
Secret: Recruiting often “powerless” but always passionate allies ... who will play with you
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and try out your seriously-cool-but-untested ideas. And “Sign Up.” I call
it:F2F/K2K/1@T/R.F!A. That is: Freak to Freak. Kook to Kook. One at a Time.
Ready.Fire!Aim. Enemy No.1: An epitaph that reads: HE WOULDA DONE
SOMEREALLY COOL STUFF ... BUT HIS BOSS WOULDN’T LET HIM. Our Hero?
Michelangelo: THE PROBLEM IS NOT THAT OUR AIM IS TOO HIGH AND WE MISS
IT, BUT THAT IT IS TOO LOW AND WE HIT IT. (Whoops.)
WEB WORLD: THE 100% SOLUTION ... NOW! Key term: 100%. Others know more
than I about The Web. But I have developed an Unshakeable & Radical Point of View:
THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. OR NOTHING. Taking lessons from Schwab, GE, Oracle,
Cisco ... I assiduously believe that you must convert ... ALL ACTIVITIES TO THE
WEB(internal & external affairs) ... or risk losing the business. Message: THE WEB AIN’T
AHALF-WAY SORTA THING! (P.S.: Potential = UNLIMITED. For the BOLD.)
(DREAM BIG. DREAM BOLD. Or, skulk off ... stage left!)
PSF UNBOUND: THE (TOTAL) VICTORY OF THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
FIRM. I/we have written extensively about the “Professional Service Firm Model.” I/we
have seen it as a way to save one’s soul (or at least one’s job) in the face of the Coming
White Collar Tsunami. Fine. But ... there’s a Bigger Picture. Hewlett-Packard offered $18
Billion for PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants. Making a “great box” was not enough.
My contention is that the “internal” “professional services” will – quickly – become The
Engine of Value Creation. In damn near any firm. To be sure, the Internal PSFs will have
to join together to create value; but, still, it is their world. Period.
EDUCATION AND THIRD MILLENNIUM WORK: WE’VE GOT IT DANGEROUSLY
WRONG. Education for the Third Millennium ... undoes everything we’ve done in
education for the last 100 or so years. Our “system” works. Or, rather, worked. It turns out
docile – sit in your seat, Tommy – “products” (humans) perfectly fit to spend 40 years in a
Ford Model T plant. And perfectly unfit to be part of the new Brain & Productivity-based
Economy!
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